Crash Risk on Kirby Drive

This map shows 1225 motor vehicle crashes that occurred on Kirby Drive, a seven mile long arterial in the City of Houston, between 1998 and 2001. The locations of the crashes are shown as red dots. CrimeStat was used to identify crash hot spots. First-order hot spots are shown in pink. These are locations with a high concentration of crashes and were identified with the nearest neighbor hierarchical clustering routine. Typically, crash hot spots occur where there are higher traffic volumes. Note the concentration of hot spots near the entry and exit points of the US 59 South and Interstate 610 South freeways. On the other hand, 'crash risk' is the number of crashes relative to the volume of traffic, usually measured in crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT). The duel kernel density routine was used to estimate crash risk (shown in blue). Finally, specific hot spots that have a high crash risk are shown in green. These were identified with the risk-adjusted nearest neighbor hierarchical clustering routine in CrimeStat.